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amits4g2 · 3 years

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Muddle Through Towards Better Web Design

Since the arrival of Pope Benedict XIV at the Twitter scene, I've been wondering how many people who don't know how to use the Internet are still out there in the Western world. But an even more intriguing question is this: how come so many people are proficient at using it? Have they been taught web browsing at school? Did they have to read "Internet For Beginners"? Have they taken any special courses?

The answer of course is that they learnt things on the fly. Our cognitive abilities allow us to instinctively absorb new information, recognize new patterns and adapt to new environments and routines. We don't need special instructions or conscious decision-making regarding the best approach to knowledge accumulation. We want to do something and we try to do it. We "muddle through".

How Do We Really Use Websites?

So how many of you read the user guide booklet that came with your new iPhone? What about the "Convention Used in This Book" page in your latest educational book? Mu guess is: not many. The same is true for the way we use websites. Everyone's busy, everyone's just trying to figure out how to get to a particular place and doing anything else seems like a waste of time. Now the funny thing is that everyone's got their own way of doing things. Even when it comes to a standard process such as navigating a website, some people will follow the links in the main navigation, while others will use the search button or start scanning paragraphs for clues.

One important implication of this tendency to muddle through is that people will often use websites in unexpected ways. Designers sometime envisage a perfect way of completing a particular process, e.g. you click on this link, you fill the form, you browse the available options and choose one as indicated in the instructions displayed to you left, you click the big "submit" button, etc. But in practice there are many ways to browse a website, use a web application, or even fill a contact form ("should I put my phone in the specially designated field or attach it in the body of the message like I always do?"). As a result, when offered a detailed record of how websites are actually used, some designers might think "who on Earth would let those monkeys anywhere near a computer?" Such attitude ignores of course that web users are not trying to figure out what the brilliant designer had in mind when creating the interface. They just want to get what they came for. If they have muddled through something and it worked, why shouldn't they try the same approach next time?

A well quoted example of such interface misconception is Steve Krug's anecdote about some users typing full URLs (including www.) into the Yahoo search box every time they want to go to a particular website. Krug explains:

If you ask them about it, it becomes clear that some of them think that Yahoo is the Internet, and that this is the way you use it. Muddling through, being a rather crude approach to cognition, is clearly prone to errors. But many errors, like the one above, don't have a great impact on the end result. If a website is used on a regular basis, an incomplete understating might slow things down a notch or make the user miss out on alternative options. But if you compare this to a structured approach to web browsing that involves careful review of published instructions and analysis of all potential routes and uses of the interface, then muddling through certainly sounds attractive. As Jeffrey Veen puts it:

[..] we're much more like motorists behind the wheel of a car in an unfamiliar city. We have a clear destination in mind, and are making split-second decisions while negotiating a confusing new place. And we are doing a task that demands our attention at the same time. No wonder we don't read. We're just trying to get done with this nonsense as quickly as possible. I believe this to be a well accepted proposition in the realm of user experience. However, besides this need for time-optimization there is also an alternative perspective for understanding the muddling through process where the explanation is found in the depths of the human psyche. In such view, we don't simply choose to muddle through. Muddling through is what makes us who we are.

Psychology of Muddling Through - the Doing Mode

In the field of Psychology, the process of muddling through is recognized as part of the "Doing mode". Doing mode is the function of the mind that allows rational critical thinking. Doing mode is what allows us to build bridges, send men to space, or write our thesis. It also governs the process of learning from repetition, a crucial ingredient to the success of the muddling through approach.

According to Prof. Mark Williams from Oxford University, Doing mode usually begins with recognition of a gap between our perceived current state and some alternative state that we would prefer to be in. In the context of the Web, this could be as simple as "I sit here bored to death; I would rather be watching a video of a skateboarder hurting himself". This perceived gap triggers an automatic pattern of mind activity, which sole aim to bring us closer the desired state.

Doing mode is responsible for analysing, planning, comparing, judging, discriminating, etc. What might be less obvious to some readers (especially those who never practiced meditation) is that these processes are usually instantaneous and unconscious. In the West, thinking is often considered a domain of consciousness. This is not true, however. Many people would be ready to claim thoughts as their own. But when asked where their thoughts came from, most would be left bemused. Thoughts arise spontaneously. In a state of concentration the trend of thought can generally be directed towards a specific subject but the arising of thoughts seems as if mental phenomena had a life of their own.

What I'm getting at is that Doing mode, and hence muddling through, is like an automatic pilot. We don't choose to do it, we just do it. In some sense Doing mode can be thought of as an elaborate survival mechanism. The existence of a desired state usually leaves us little room for considering why such state is desired or what the optimal way of achieving it is. Doing mode forces us to strive towards the goal, regardless of whether it was chosen in a sober, conscious state of mind or not. In fact, the goal does not even have to be "real". It can be based on an ephemeral emotion that develops into a mood (interestingly this is how stress arises - the mind considers a negative feeling to be a problem, a gap that must be overcome, triggering an array of memories, thoughts, and impulses that have a similar emotional hue in order to find a "solution"). This helps explain why when feeling a little down or lonely we can end up spending hours surfing for pictures of cats playing piano without even noticing.

Intuitive Web Design

Doing mode is not something designers need to fight against (although see "Conclusion" below for a brief mention of an alternative mode). Instead, designers need to try capture this somewhat primitive mind activity by allowing it to freely channel towards a positive outcome (finding information, buying products online, leaving a feedback, etc.).

If we compare web design to building a house, it is often too tempting for an architect to assume the house being used by a perfect gentlemen, who will always politely knock on the door, wipe his shoes on the "Welcome" mat, take of his hat and put it on the designated coat rack, and head to the dining room, never stepping outside the corridor carpet. The real user of the house, however, turns out to be a caveman who breaks the kitchen window with his club to get in, and rummages through the garbage bin in search for food.

The role of the architect is not to discriminate between the gentleman and the caveman and label one as "right" and the other as "wrong" or "crazy". The architect should instead recognize the nature of the house's users. If putting a gate in the kitchen will benefit the users, then that's what needs to be done. Decorating the dining room is not the priority.

Conclusion

Muddling through is not a niche approach to using the Web. It is the human way of using the Web and is true even for the most web-savvy people (or especially for web-savvy people). The reason why the process often doesn't receive the recognition it deserves is because we are not aware of it. The fact that it's subconscious does not mean it cannot be harnessed. It does, however, require thorough analysis of our emotional and behavioural tendencies in order for it to be helpful in building smarter web interfaces.

As most things in nature, Doing mode has its opposing force. In addition to the Doing mode, human mind can also operate in a state of awareness and directed attention that is devoid of judgment, allowing us to directly experience the present moment. Psychologists have labelled this state "Being mode". Though not ideal for navigation, we might prefer users to be in a Being mode when faced with a new idea that would be discarded in the Doing mode due to biased views. In such a scenario, we might want to shake the user out of his day-dreaming mode and become awake and alert, seeing things with a clearly comprehensive mind and inviting the user to re-examine his own condition.

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bradbishop409 · 5 years

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Time Management

Juggling Work

We all may have said it, or at least thought it at one time or another: I wish there were more hours in a day. Between working between 8 to 10 hours a day (sometimes more depending on your occupation) and keeping up with any other obligations, sometimes it can feel like there is just not enough time in the day. I mean, there are 24 hours, but we must sleep some time, right?

But aside from outside obligations, maybe you are a person who is looking to have multiple streams of income. Most of the success stories we read about or come across online in articles tend to discuss how they have multiple streams of income or the “Side hustle”. But we only see them after a significant amount of work is put in. After a website has been created and is now just making passive income. After the book has been published so they just had to determine what they wanted to do next.

So how do you learn how to manage your full-time job, your home life, and your ability to make a lucrative income with a side gig?

Prioritize.

As with anything in life, priorities are key. They are important in helping you determine what will be the best avenue to take and what will yield the highest return. Having your priorities in order ensure you won’t make a decision that will jeopardize your livelihood and well-being in pursuit of something that does not yield that high of a return. For instance, if you are starting a new blog, you wouldn’t want to spend so much time being consumed with your blog that you neglect your family or even begin to neglect the current job you have that is providing income in the meantime.

Set Goals.

Finding your niche when trying to find a lucrative side hustle can be difficult. It doesn’t usually hurt to try new things. You do, however, want to set goals for yourself. Give yourself a time frame on when you are looking to see return on investment (ROI). These goals, along with your priorities, can help you determine if what you are trying is or is not worth your time.

These things can help in not only ensuring you don’t waste your time, but also that you can determine how much time you should be spending on work efforts. Work is a great thing as it brings in finances that can help your day-to-day and month-to-month expenses. It is also important to know when it’s time to stop working, and the equally important, when is the most appropriate time to work or take a break.

Online Courses

I have heard the question asked several times. No matter if it is a student fresh out of high school, or an older individual looking to further their education. Are online courses for me?

I have finished a degree online. I enjoyed the convenience of online courses, and how I was able to finish my degree at my own pace, sort of. If you are looking in to furthering your education, and are considering online courses, there are several things to consider. All these things will help to determine if online courses are the best option for you.

Price.

Depending on what courses you are looking to take online and where, price can vary. Obviously if you are looking to complete a full degree plan the tuition would cost more than if you were to just obtain a certificate. But even in that case, it is still wise to determine what school and program provides the most value for the best price.

Time Management.

On top of whatever obligations, you may currently have, such as work or family, you must determine if you have good enough time management skills to allot time for these courses if you were to be enrolled in them. Without having an advisor in the room with you for a specified amount of time, it may be more difficult for you to determine when the best time to complete assignments is.

Discipline.

Time management goes hand in hand with having self-discipline. If you aren’t going to be disciplined enough to complete assignments and turn in work on time, doing courses online may not be the best option for you. If, however, you believe that you would have no problem in taking the time to essentially teach yourself the material, it’s a more convenient alternative.

Class Length.

Online programs can vary as far as their course length. For instance, the classes I take are only 8 weeks, while a friend of mine only has 6-week classes. Even some courses in my program are offered for a full semester, about 16 weeks. This is something you want to consider when looking at online programs, especially once you look at the price, your time management, and your self-discipline skills. If you won’t be able to handle a large workload in a short amount of time you may need longer courses. Whatever would allow you to be the most successful.

Online courses aren’t for everyone, but for those that take them they can be extremely convenient and appealing. It’s up to you to determine if they best suit your needs.

Maintaining the House

Whether you are a stay at home parent or have a full-time job. Whether you are married or single. Whether you are male or female. No matter what category or demographic you may fall in to, maintaining your home is something that you are responsible for. There has been a common misconception that a woman is responsible for maintaining the household. The reality is, anyone who is in the home should contribute to the maintenance of that home.

So, what does it mean to maintain something like a house?

This could mean different things to different people, but for the purposes of this post maintaining the house is referencing the upkeep of the home as well as the financial aspects on what it takes to maintain a home.

Of course, if I were to ask, most people would say a clean house is important. Now we all know that most houses also don’t stay clean all day every day. Clean is also relative to individual people’s preferences. Clean to one person may be organized clutter (like some room sin my house), while to others it may be completely spotless, everything in its respective place. No matter what your preference is for clean, it is still your responsibility to contribute to that cleanliness in the house.

The great thing is, the way individuals contribute may also be completely different as well. Some may choose to pay a professional cleaner once or twice a month, while others may choose to pick a day out of the week and clean it themselves.

Maintaining could also be the actual maintenance of the home. For instance, ensuring light bulbs and air filters are changed, making any repairs, etc. Again, this is something that you may or may not have to do on your own depending on what type of home you live in, as well as if you rent or own.

Another major contributing factor to the maintaining of a home is of course, finances. No matter how clean your house is or how often your air filters are changes, if the mortgage isn’t paid or the utilities are disconnected, it won’t matter one bit. Maintaining your house also means managing your finances to effectively maintain the home. No matter how you chose to manage your money, or even how you chose to maintain the financial integrity of the home it’s just important that it is done.

Dealing with Family

It’s safe to say we can all agree that we love our families. If you have kids, then yours are the best kids out there. Our parents did the best they could with what they had, and we turned out great, some of us anyway. But what do we do when our family is getting on our last nerve?

Often, I speak with people who have the most issues with dealing with family members as it pertains to their in-laws. In-laws tend to get a bad reputation for being mean and any other adjective you might have heard someone use to describe them.

So, let’s say you just so happen to have one of those in-laws. Or even if you have some distant cousins, nieces, or some other family members that just are hard to deal with. How do you manage? How do you handle it if they can’t be easily ignored? What about family holidays?

Dealing with family can be stressful enough, even without those individuals who seem to be a pain. There are a few things you can do to help yourself deal with them to make your life a little less stressful!

Know your relatives.

In most things in life, you can fix your own problems and deal with things just in the way you think about them. We can sometimes get ourselves in trouble by having different expectations for people who have proven themselves to us time and time again. It’s important to know your relatives and set your expectations as such. Having your mind pre-prepared with the expectation of who your family is and what they do allows you to handle them a little better when you must encounter them. Why? Because your expectations aren’t so high.

Love them from a distance.

Not all family members are created equal. Some of them you must know when to keep at arm’s length. Just because you are in the same vicinity, or at the same family event doesn’t mean that you are absolutely obligated to spend a significant amount of your time with them. Instead, find a way to be polite and cordial, without making yourself miserable.

Put your foot down.

Sometimes we find ourselves in a position where we are miserable, and we don’t have to be. Dealing with family can often be as simple as putting your foot down when you refuse to be treated a certain way, talked to a certain way, or even taken advantage of. Don’t allow yourself to be walked over to “keep the peace”, sometimes things need to be said. Action needs to be taken. Your sanity is important.

No matter what degree you find yourself needing to “deal” with family members, it is important to know that there is always something you can do to ensure you are not in a position of stress and discord for a long period of time.

Social Life

Social media has become all the craze today. While social media can be a great and effective tool, is it putting a damper on our actual social lives? You know, the ones we have in real life, not just virtually. But even today, how much of a real social life do we really need with all the resources available via internet?

For some of us, our social lives are our livelihood. We depend on that social life to general clients for our business. We may even depend on that social life to give us an excuse to put our home and family obligations on hold for a few hours.

No matter what the reason may be, having a social life, even if it’s a small one, can be extremely beneficial. When we think about a social life, or minds may go straight to night’s out and cocktail parties. This, however, doesn’t have to be the case.

Your social life is essentially the friends you hang around, the events you attend, basically whatever life you live in a more social setting. Typically, this life is separate from your work and home life, though they may overlap from time to time. As I mentioned, this is where you typically are with friends, relaxing, and having a good time. So, the question is, do you need a social life?

I’d say yes! You may not have to have the most extravagant social life possible, but those few faithful friends who get out with you from time to time can be all you need. Your social life shouldn’t be something that consumes most of your time, unless you are social influencers. Instead, it should be something that affords you the opportunity to put your obligations and responsibilities on hold for a moment. Make an opportunity to stop and enjoy yourself.

Your social life also may have different sections. For instance, you may have your own friends that you spend time with alone. If you are married, you may also have other married friends that you spend time with together as couples with. Then there is also the friends and events you may have or participate in if you have children. All these areas can be a part of your social life.

Whether you are a party animal or are more life me and prefer to just head to a restaurant for conversation from time to time, your social life is important. It’s what gives you the opportunity to get away or express yourself in ways you might not be able to in your normal business or home setting.

As mentioned earlier, this social life may also come in handy when it comes to your business. Depending on your occupation, the connections you make in your social life can be very beneficial for your personal and professional development.

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lesliepump · 6 years

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Should Law Blogs Allow Comments?

But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas—that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Comment Problems

Trolls

You might not be able to win an argument on the internet, but does that mean we shouldn’t even have the discussion? Back when Popular Science online content director Suzanne LaBarre (@suzannelabarre) announced that PopularScience.com would no longer accept comments on new articles, the free trade of ideas took a hit.

LaBarre provided the following reasoning for hitting the “off” switch:

A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to “debate” on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.

Her argument that comments that call into question scientifically-validated topics are influencing people’s perceptions for the worse, doesn’t seem to me to outweigh the value of the exchange of ideas. Because people make stuff up and lie, and some people buy it, there should be no conversation at all? I feel like I’ve heard this before.

It seems to me that there’s another option: comment moderation.

While supporting PopSci‘s move, The Washington Post‘s Alexandra Petri wrote:

The few places where the comments sections are the home of a vibrant, riveting, polite discussion are the ones where the host site has made a vigorous effort to create community.

Exactly. Unfortunately, Petri also concluded that major news sites just aren’t the place to have good discussions:

And even if you are a regular on news stories (hi, folks!), the nature of big news or breaking science is that if it’s big and controversial enough for people to flood in to read about it, that small regular community gets overrun. It is hard to maintain community in the middle of a stampede. You only use the correct forks when you aren’t fighting through throngs of people to tear hunks off the new carcass.

For what it’s worth, at the time of writing, both The Washington Post and The New York Times, as well as, several other major online newspapers, have some form of commenting turned on.

There’s little question that discussion moderation requires vigorous effort. Even tiny sites may have to deal with hundreds, if not, thousands of comments on a regular basis. And the overwhelming majority of those are likely to be bots, trolls or spam. But is the solution to end the discussion altogether?

Of course, there is also room for publications that don’t allow comments. And maybe a scientific research site isn’t a great candidate for debate in a public forum. And of course, PopSci is free to define its identity. However, their message, as Marie-Claire Shanahan, Research Chair in Science Education and Public Engagement at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada puts it:

Well we didn’t really mean for people to be engaged, we just want you to listen to us more.

I tend to agree with GigaOm‘s Mathew Ingram who wrote in response:

both wrong and sad MT @jaredbkeller: Popular Science is doing away with comments: "Comments can be bad for science." http://t.co/fsPaD5kAqp

— Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) September 24, 2013

I also still agree with Slate‘s Will Oremus in that moderated comments have value:

Writing on Slate, I’ve encountered plenty of both varieties over the years, and on balance I far prefer a mix of useful and useless comments to no comments at all. I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve been alerted to new developments, factual oversights, dissenting opinions, and fresh story ideas by readers using the comments section below my stories and blog posts. Commenters also help authors understand where they’ve explained a point in a misleading way, and what readers are taking away from their posts. Our commenting system is far from perfect, and yet I wouldn’t give it up for anything. Gizmodo’s Matt Novak neatly encapsulated the alternative: Writing on a site without comments, he said, felt like “whispering to myself in the wilderness.”

I wish Popular Science had taken a page from YouTube and come up with ways to make their comment system better.

Likewise, I don’t believe trolls, ignorance, and bots are sufficient justification to end the conversation on legal websites and blogs.

If your concerns stem from the resources required for moderation, there are a variety of ways you may limit those costs. For example, tools like Disqus can be configured to drastically reduce bots. You can also require users to register before commenting or use whitelists.

If you’re looking for examples of busy legal bloggers who are pulling it off, I direct you to Popehat and its comment policy.

Ghost Town

Another argument I regularly hear levied against comments goes something like this:

Blogs that have open commenting, but receive no comments, look sad.

To this I reply, “Boo-hoo.”

What’s more sad is that you decided to remove the ability for your audience to leave comments because of feelz or marketing. Instead, why not try to publish something that spurs discussion? Pro tip: this is actually much more effective for marketing.

The Case for Comments

Back at The Post, Petri observed that:

The more obscure and bizarre the niche group, the friendlier the comments. By and large the comments on your Erotic Lincoln Vampire Fanfiction are much kinder and better spelled than the comments on a major news story about, say, wiretapping and surveillance, which mainly consist of erratically capitalized screeds against the president and observations that would not be out of place in a toilet stall.

Which raises the question, do law blogs in general have the kind of niche audience that makes comments better than usual?

While generally not as inflammatory as the stuff found at PopSci, the legal blogosphere is hardly immune from, “shrill, boorish, specimens of the lower internet phyla.”

Furthermore, as some veteran curmudgeons are quick to point out, some of the comments may actually be eroding well-established principles of the practice of law. Should the legal blogosphere also “hit the off switch” on comments too?

Unfortunately, it seems the trolls are winning. Above the Law said farewell to comments in 2016:

Today the comments are not what they once were. Although occasionally insightful or funny, ATL comments nowadays are generally fewer in number, not very substantive (often just inside jokes among the commentariat), yet still often offensive. They also represent a very small percentage of our total traffic (as we can tell because of the click required to access them).

To me, it seems they had it closer to right back in 2009:

Here at ATL, we reserve the right to moderate comments as we see fit. We delete comments for reasons including (but not limited to) offensiveness, abusiveness, excessive profanity, irrelevance, or rank stupidity. Above the Law is a privately owned website; we have no obligation to provide our bandwidth to any particular user. Because we are not governmental actors, we are not subject to the equal-access rules of the First Amendment; when we moderate comments, it is not “censorship.”

But we also offer this recommendation to people who are offended by the comments: DON’T READ THEM. Toward that end, we want to make it easier for you to avoid the comments if you want to. Over the next 24 hours, we’ll be changing our site design so that comments will default to “hidden.” If you want to see the comments, you must affirmatively opt-in, by clicking a button to reveal them (either the “show them anyway” button within the post, or the “comments” button / counter on the front page).

At the risk of pummeling horse carcass, legal bloggers can use their judgment in deciding which comments see daylight. But I would suggest, that even those comments that go against everything veteran lawyers have learned from eons of practice have some value.

First, when attached to real identities, they help readers weigh the credibility of the person leaving the comment, as well as, the response. Second, they tease out “the work” of demonstrating why the comment is wrong.

To me, comments (even the dumb ones) are fundamental to the very nature of blogging. As noted at Wikipedia:

A majority are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via GUI widgets on the blogs, and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites. In that sense, blogging can be seen as a form of social networking. Indeed, bloggers do not only produce content to post on their blogs, but also build social relations with their readers and other bloggers. There are high-readership blogs which do not allow comments, such as Daring Fireball.

Sure, there are plenty of great one-way blogs. But there’s something special about a blog that can result in a robust community in the comments.

Social Media as Comment Substitute

It has also been suggested by some that social media platforms are effectively replacing comments. This was part of the reason driving MarketingLand‘s and SearchEngineLand‘s decision to remove comments:

2.) We see much more commentary about our articles on social media.

We get a report every month showing all of the social activity surrounding both websites, and it’s not uncommon for each article and column we publish to get hundreds of engagements across social channels; our more popular articles often go over a thousand engagements. In most cases, this may just be a tweet or Facebook share of the headline and link, but very often there are comments and questions included in those social posts — certainly far more often than the few times our articles ever received on-page comments.

When I write an article for one of our sites, I regularly get engaged in conversation with readers on Twitter. And I see many of our staff writers and contributors doing the same. That’s anecdotal, but the overall evidence is unmistakable: Social media is where the commentary is taking place.

Here’s the problem:

Since your site decided to remove comments: I am left to discuss them on social media; Not much discussion this way either. ;(

— Bill Slawski ? (@bill_slawski) October 30, 2017

When people arrive at a post or page, their attention is on the subject matter. Relying solely on social media for these conversations creates unnecessary barriers to the conversation. Most won’t bother to click through to Facebook pages to spark conversations. And those that do, face fractured conversations and platform limitations.

Social media is simply not a replacement for comments.

Comments and Legal Ethics

Of course, in considering whether to allow comments, lawyers must consider potential legal ethics issues. Especially those issues that relate to risks to clients and potential clients. Much of this risk can be diminished by holding comments for moderation before publishing. In other words, protecting clients and people with legal issues from posting something stupid that might put them in jeopardy. At a minimum, you should not allow any comments that reveal details about the commenter’s particular legal problem.

It’s also useful to provide visitors some information about your policy on comments. You might refer to The New York Times for some guidance. Or use something like this:

When you post a comment, you grant us the right to modify or delete your comment, but we have no duty to do so. If you want us to post your comment, make it coherent, relevant, and respectful.

Also, posting information about your legal problem on a public website is a bad idea. Any such comments will be deleted.

Mind Your Comment Settings

No matter which platform you choose, you should hold comments for moderation. If you’re a WordPress user (and you probably should be), get familiar with the comment settings in the Discussion panel:

I recommend checking the boxes for:

Comment author must fill out name and e-mail

Enable threaded (nested) comments at least 3 levels deep

An administrator must always approve the comment

For repeat comment policy violators, you can use the Comment Blacklist:

When a comment contains any of these words in its content, name, URL, e-mail, or IP, it will be marked as spam. One word or IP per line. It will match inside words, so “press” will match “WordPress”. This text box acts the same as “When a comment conatins any of these words…” except comments which match these words will be deleted without warning. You may want to use this as a last resort, as genuine comments can end up deleted (WordPress 1.5 and later)

You might also consider requiring comment registration. However, Kevin O’Keefe provides a bunch of reasons why that’s lame. It really depends on the nature and purpose of your blog. But I agree with Kevin in that it’s likely to discourage people from commenting.

If you’re not satisfied with the WordPress comment system, there plenty of comment tools that can assist with moderation, like Disqus, Livefyre, and Facebook comments.

In addition to providing more advanced commenting options, third-party comment platforms can attract new readers. For example, if you embed Facebook comments, your commenters’ Facebook friends can see those comments, which may make them more likely to discover your blog. Remember, if you do use a third-party comment platform, configure them for moderation before posting.

What About Anonymous Comments?

One of the most effective ways to police unruly comments is to ban anonymous comments. As Jimmy Soni Managing Editor, the Huffington Post puts it defending HuffPo’s decision to end comment anonymity (citing Harper Lee):

We are capable of doing far worse things to one another when we do not have to own up to the things we do. The mob grants its members the gift of anonymity, but after Scout outs Mr. Cunningham, there ceases to be a “mob” in any real sense; there is just Mr. Cunningham, and associates. And when some kind of identity is attached to their group, the plans of that group carry a good deal more weight.

Of course, there are very compelling reasons against a total ban on anonymous comments.

It seems to me that we might want to nudge people to attach their identities to their comments, but at the same time, provide an avenue for anonymous comments. Again, this will largely be a judgment call for comment moderators.

My advice is to ask commenters to reveal their true identities, be liberal in deleting anonymous comments and allow readers to weigh the relative value of anonymous comments that meet “light of day muster.”

Should I Respond to Comments?

Responding to comments presents an additional layer of legal ethics issues. For example, can a lawyer respond to comments on their blog without creating an attorney client relationship? Sure they can. But they can also easily mistakenly cause someone to believe that the lawyer’s response was legal advice, thereby leading them to believe that such relationship exists.

So, should you respond? Sure, but don’t be stupid. Also, not every comment that’s worth publishing is worth responding to. Also, use disclaimers. Look, disclaimers are not magic Kevlar that will insulate you against every issue that arises. But they’re a good CYA practice.

If you largely ignore comments, you shouldn’t be surprised when people stop commenting, and perhaps, stop reading.

Law bloggers should also become familiar with how Section 230 of Title 47 of the United States Code (47 USC § 230) might apply to them, and more specifically, to comments on their blogs:

Your readers’ comments, entries written by guest bloggers, tips sent by email, and information provided to you through an RSS feed would all likely be considered information provided by another content provider. This would mean that you would not be held liable for defamatory statements contained in it. However, if you selected the third-party information yourself, no court has ruled whether this information would be considered “provided” to you. One court has limited Section 230 immunity to situations in which the originator “furnished it to the provider or user under circumstances in which a reasonable person…would conclude that the information was provided for publication on the Internet….”

Obviously, while Section 230 might provide protection from civil actions, lawyers are held to a different standard and really need to focus on the interplay of blogging, comments and their state’s rules of professional conduct.

Should Lawyers Turn on Comments in the First Place?

It might seem that comments are more trouble than they’re worth. If you’re feeling that way, you might re-examine why you’re even blogging in the first place.

To me, there are plenty of reasons to allow moderated comments. Comments extend the conversation beyond the substance of the post. They provide valuable feedback to the author. They can inspire future posts. They’re the symbiotic connective tissue between author and reader.

How Does it Make Me Look?

Some of you might still be worrying that allowing comments, but not having any, makes it look like nobody is reading your site. Well is anyone reading your site? If you mean to encourage comments and they are not coming, you should consider whether what you’re writing is “comment-worthy.” The lack of comments can be an indication that what you are publishing is not very interesting.

Do Comments Help My Pages Appear in Search Results?

Maybe. If your blog regularly motivates authentic comments, and you have properly implemented your commenting system to make it easy for search engines to index comments, then there’s little doubt that comments provide valuable feedback that search engines use.

However, if you don’t moderate your comments, leaving your posts riddled with spam comments, you might actually be hurting your posts’ chances of appearing in results. Furthermore, depending on your comment system configuration, you may be limiting your comments’ indexation. While Google has been indexing some sites’ Facebook Comments, it’s not clear that this has been completely resolved. Over at Blind Five Year Old, AJ Kohn breaks down some of the search issues presented by Facebook Comments. If you do use Facebook Comments, you should still extract them and display them inline for search engines.

As search engines continue to evolve, who comments on your site is likely to play a larger role in how your pages appear in search results. Yes, fix the technical issues preventing your comments from getting indexed. But more importantly, focus on publishing stuff that real people actually want to read and comment on.

Hopefully, it’s pretty clear how I feel about comments. What do you think?

This was originally published in 2013. It was updated and revised on 2018-02-13.

Should Law Blogs Allow Comments? was originally published on Lawyerist.com.

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